šŸ”· xDuoo TA-26 Tube Amplifier

Just got mine today - that hum/buzzing soundā€¦it makes me want to return it ASAP.

Iā€™ll give it another week or two, but yeahā€¦not a great first impression :slightly_frowning_face:

Pull the power tube out, run it with just the preamp tube in for three days.

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Safe to say the ā€œpower tubeā€ is the large one in the back? Yes, youā€™re still dealing with a noob here :slight_smile:

Yup. Leave the little one in, big one out. Keep it on for sometime. I did about three or four days on my DV I do believe.

I did this straight-away and I had heard of it on DV enough times as a fix for this common occurrence.
I didnā€™t even try it straight-away to find out if I had the hum. I wish you luck!

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It took a full 7 days for my tungsol pre tube to fully stop humming. Sucks it took a bit but still loving it.

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Great to hear! What did the trick, just usage?

Buzz got much less audible after the 72 hour burn in and then a gradual decline with regular usage afterwards. Gonna try out a shuguang and or psvane next.

Update on the buzz - it goes completely away when I plug the amp to a dongle DAC via an RCA-to-3.5mm cable.

Makes me wonder if my JDS Element II shouldnā€™t be used as a DAC for this amp? :thinking:

Makes me wonder if that is another case of a Ground Problem. IIRC someone had a similar humming/buzzing issue with a different amp that went away by adding a ground point to the amp.

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Buzzing aside, this amp has quickly become a favorite of mine. Iā€™m blown away by what Iā€™m hearing about 80% of the time with this thing, especially with the HD 6XX.

I was THIS close to selling my 6XX as I just didnā€™t think they sounded great. Boy was I wrong.

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Yep me with the MT-604ā€¦every time I touched the chassis the humming went awayā€¦bought a grounding cable and all good now :+1:

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Agreed. hd6__ and dt 880 600 ohm were all meh on my magni/modi stack. Upgraded to this and modi multibit and Iā€™m so damn happy everytime I fire them up.

how would you compare the sound of this vs element 2? I feel that element 2 already makes 6xx sound almost perfect but Iā€™m really curious how different it sounds with ta-26.

I got a Feliks Audio MK2 for my HD600 and am convinced those Sennies are meant to be run off of tubesā€¦ they just sound awesome then, right?

The buzzing is likely a result of a ground loop or a mismatch of the output/input impedance of the rca connections. Do you have both the Element and the TA-26 on the same power strip?

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Iā€™m new to this hobby, so Iā€™ll try explaining as best as I can :slightly_smiling_face:

The 6XX really opens up with the TA 26. Itā€™s a more fun and lively listening experience. One could argue the Element sounds more accurate (and narrow), but I would never choose it over the TA 26 because itā€™s not as fun a listening experience to me.

Just saw the below review and found it to be VERY insightful. The 6XX is mentioned here too, so take a look!

I forgot to share an update about the buzzing issue. At this point, I no longer notice it! Perhaps there was a burn-in period that did the trickā€¦not really sure.

Yep, just tripled-checked and thereā€™s no buzzing at all (from the headphones) right now :+1:

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Sweet. Then it most like was one of the tubes. This can happen.

I should be working, but these bad boys just came in the mail :smile:

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Thank you again ā€“ I got rid of the buzz on my new tubes in less than a day! Itā€™s not completely gone yet, but itā€™s barely audible now.

Pull the power tube out, run it with just the preamp tube in for three days.

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Tube Recommendations

Iā€™m really enjoying this tube combo for the TA 26:

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